


A Halfway State

by heyyylee



Category: 1917 (Movie 2019)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, basically what i think was going through scho's head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:00:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23659528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyyylee/pseuds/heyyylee
Summary: The moments between the farmhouse and the tree behind the trenches are both an emotional eternity and a benumbed blur. Schofield's thoughts during those moments may not be fully known, but one can speculate.
Relationships: Tom Blake & William Schofield, Tom Blake/William Schofield, William Schofield/William Schofield's Wife
Kudos: 15





	A Halfway State

He is hovering in a halfway state. Since he wiped his hands on the grass and stood to follow orders, he has been both painfully aware and painfully numb. Operating on auto pilot at moments, only to think far too long about his breathing and the throbbing in his left hand and the emptiness at his side.

And then he is shot at. Will thinks of nothing but saving himself as he fires back at the sniper. As he walks up the stairs, he hears his footsteps, his breaths, his own beating heart, and he wishes they’d be a little quieter. Then there is black as he blinks.

It must be a long blink, because he wakes up on his back, his hair matted in something thick and sticky. There is Tom’s voice in his head, laughing about sweet, golden syrup-smelling hair oil. But this is not hair oil. What it is, he can’t place, as his head has gone fuzzy and he no longer hears anything. Not his breaths or his heartbeat or even the memory of Tom’s voice.

Fortunately, perhaps, he cannot think as he stumbles along. There are no memories, no anxieties, no sense of identity. Of course, this lack of cognizance would not occur to him until later, when he tries to recount what happened in the small French town. He will furrow his brows and try to remember how far it was between the building of the dead sniper and the grate to the woman and baby, but he will only have flashes of light that arc across his brain. No thoughts, no words, no sound. Just furious orange in the form of harsh and unforgiving light.

But, of course, he remembers the woman. It was his first realization of his halfway state.

He is sat in the chair, his back to her, and his breathing picks up. Her fingers move to the side of his head, and his heart stutters. A cloth presses to the back of his head, and he groans. 

His wife, cradling his face as she checks him over. The way she pressed cold and smooth fingertips against the back of his neck, ran her eyes and her touch over every minor change in his skin. Every scratch, every bruise. The bags under his eyes. And when he had inhaled sharply at a wound he can’t even remember, she had pressed a cold washcloth to it.

“I hated going home,” he’d admitted. The knowledge that he would leave the care of his family to return to a place of horror was crushing. He didn’t think he’d receive a gentle touch again. Best case scenario, not for a few more months, at least. But here he is, head sticky with what he finally realizes is his own blood, being cared for by a woman who he can’t even hold a conversation with.

As his wife’s face and the woman’s morph into one, he has his first clear train of thought since he opened his eyes to water hitting his forehead. He remembers his name, his rank, his mission. He remembers who should be there with him, but who is now lying mere meters from the body of the one who killed him.

He realizes his fragile mentality. He is just about to pull it together, pick his head up from the woman’s touch, when he hears the baby.

My daughter, he thinks, I have to comfort her.

But then the woman is moving and he snaps back to himself. It is a daughter, but not one that belongs to either of the people in the room. He fights off the flickering images of his girls, all of them, and stands slowly. He is becoming aware once again, his senses returning to him, his stream of consciousness not far behind.

The food and milk he had collected go to the pair without hesitation. Will allows himself a moment to interact with the young and innocent life before him, and just as he feels himself start to slip away again, the bells chime. His internal monologue becomes frantic as it reminds him of what he needs to accomplish and the small amount of time he has to do so.

In his recanting of the tale, the next part is a bit blurry, too. He does know what he did, but his memory of it is narrow, every image viewed through a tunnel in his mind’s eye. The one startlingly clear thing in the midst of it is perhaps the one thing he wants to forget. It is the feeling of a pulse fading to nothing under his fingers, the growingly weak swats from a boy younger than even Tom. Logically, Will understands he had to do it. He just wishes otherwise.

Memories of the river are characterized by the burning of his lungs. He thinks that one of the flares from Ecoust could have been fired into his lungs, and it still wouldn’t have burned as much as the water did.

Then, there is a moment of light. The sun had started to rise, and it was snowing around him. Blossoms fell all around, and there was Tom’s voice again, in the back of his mind, urging him on, to look at the trees, Scho, you’re getting closer!

Bile had churned in his stomach, made its way up to his chest. It started to rise as he crawled over the bodies on his way to the river bank. A blink, and he is on hands and knees, sobs ripping out of his throat. The burning in his gut stops somehow, but he doesn’t know if he retched or if his body accepted his cries in return for vomit.

Time has gone all funny again. He isn’t sure how long he stays before he staggers up. There is a melody floating on the wind, but he could be imagining it. He has floated out again. Will is no longer Will, but just a pained soul barely living in a battered body. 

A blink, and he is sliding down a tree. It sounds like cotton has been stuffed in his ears. The boy’s voice is not heard, but felt. It bounces around what feels like an empty skull, though he isn’t sure how the song made it in. He trembles no more, and he doesn’t comprehend, much less understand it.

He is surrounded by men. No, not men, boys. So many young ones, waiting anxiously for the fight, buzzing with adrenaline. He looks, and each of them have the same face. Chubby cheeks, dark curls, bright eyes. He can think only of a name that is not his own, and the slightest memory attached. “He looks like me, a little older.” They are surely not who he’s looking for. They are not even as old as his friend.

Another blink. He is surrounded by two, three, four soldiers. He mumbles the basis of his mission, though he doesn’t know how he remembers. But then they are confirming that they’re the Devons, and he is up again and staggering on.

He is not so numb anymore. He is being warmed from the inside, from the ferocity of his anger. Shaking officers he would not speak to so sharply if he was in his right mind, he moves on through. Awareness comes in brief moments, in different ways. The thought that these trenches are white, ashen, like the face of Tom as he was laid down. The memory that he must find Colonel McKenzie and deliver the letter. The indignation that it is suggested that he wait for men to run to their deaths before moving along. The clarity, or perhaps stupidity, of pulling himself up and running the wrong way.

Auditory exclusion is not a term known to Will, but it is the only thing that describes this mad dash. Explosions and war cries threaten to deafen him, or maybe they already have, since he doesn’t hear them. A heartbeat thuds in his ears as he drives on. He is hit by one man, then another, but it doesn’t matter. He must find the colonel, and then he must find Lieutenant Blake. 

When he tells this story, whether to others or himself, he remembers his interaction with the colonel, and the major, and every man up to Blake. There is nothing blurring this part of the story. Later on, he might wish that his talk with the man who looks like Tom, just a little older, isn’t so clear in his memory. The fact is, he was hyper-aware of every part of that conversation, and the moments thereafter. How the man’s face dropped in the silence between asking where his brother was and Will’s soft, “It was very quick,” how his trembling returned as the lieutenant’s started, how he wasn’t sure if he agreed with the sentiment that it was good Will was the one with Tom, how Joseph’s sob behind Will as he walked was choked, like his own when he made it out of the river.

When he walks towards the tree that looks so much like the one he and Tom once napped under, he feels the haunting melody of the boy in the woods in his very bones. He can’t remember how the song went, but his body doesn’t need perfect recollection to recreate the eeriness of the moment.

Come back to us, and he allows his mind to go to his family willingly for the first time since his last leave. He hopes he will.

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on tumblr (@haileymorelikestupid) but decided it might not be a bad idea to put it here as well. It may not be much, but it's something. Tell me what you think please!!


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